


Member Number Eight

by TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead



Series: August Fifteenth [2]
Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: F/M, Gen, New Daze, The whole Dan's in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-04 22:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5350742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead/pseuds/TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When I first met Chi, she asked me what my story was. I realize now that it's impossible to answer that question when your story has no beginning and no end. </p><p>Doesn't mean I won't try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Recalibrating

I first met Hibiya a few weeks after school started up. I remember that it was Friday, because school had just let out and we were all excited about a three-day weekend. We grew up in a backwater sort of town, lots of farms, nestled safely in a valley and fed via a river that swung between the terraced slopes of the eastern and western mountains. The school I went to at the time was high up on the eastern mount, and most kids, Hibiya included, had to take a gondola down the slope to get home.

School didn’t let out till sunset, so whenever we left, we’d have a stunning view of the sun disappearing over the western peak. I remember because that day, the sky burned orange for the longest time. Despite the number of people leaving school, it was strangely quiet. I was with two girls, friends of mine that I’ve long since fallen out of touch with.

It’s strange, because it’s only been two years, August 15th notwithstanding, but it feels like a lifetime ago. Perhaps it was. Perhaps I died in there, or a part of me did at least.

But the girls.

They flanked me, one on either side. One of them - Kaori, I think - had a relative from Okinawa coming to visit that weekend, a real space-case, she said, a performance artist or something. She sounded fun to be around. Yumiko, the other girl, was taking a supplementary course in Portuguese on Monday, so she wouldn’t be able to hang out like we’d planned. We chatted like that as we walked, oblivious to the motion of time.

The mountains had been terraced for ages, and since our school stood on the edge of one of the outcroppings, there were guardrails and a set of concrete stairs leading down to the next level. At the dropoff, Kaori and Yumi both got this sudden, simultaneous hitch in their step as the saw the western peak, like they’d been caught off guard by the sunset. An arc of light shot out from behind the peak, stretching almost to the eastern mountain. Directly above us, the orange hue bumped up against brilliant purples and reds. The three of us against the background of the setting sun must have been the perfect shot, because I heard a voice behind us.

“Hey, quick picture for the yearbook?”.

We all turned, and there he was, camera in hand, kneeling, just waiting for our consent so he could take the shot. I had to laugh. We posed, and he took two quick shots, one with flash, one without. He thanked us, bowing deeply, then started to walk off before Yumi called out for him to wait. He did. She took out a little digital camera she carried with her and grabbed my arm. Before I could protest, I was standing next to him. Yumi started counting down from three, and Hibiya looked at me, his expression mirroring my own: resignation melting into conviction. "Own it", the look read.

The picture came back a few days later. It was Hibiya and I in front of the school, the orange sky blazing above us, our hands locked together and held high over our heads, like a victorious boxer and his trainer in the ring. We were both grinning, and we both looked perfectly at ease.

This was the picture I held in my palm two years later, weeping silently, as this stranger, Kido Tsubomi, gently rested her hand on my shoulder, guiding me out of the elevator, through the lobby, and into the parking lot. It felt impossible. That picture was of another girl, from another place entirely. The yearbooks, terraces, gondolas, sunsets and mountains seemed as foreign to me as ancient civilizations or the intricate movements of distant galaxies.

 

 

* * *

 

As we left the hospital, people stared at us. Hiyori, of course, was oblivious, but I quickly pulled the hood of my violet-grey hoodie over my hair and activated my power. Undisturbed, silent, we took the bullet train to our apartment. Hiyori’s eyes were red when we got home - bloodshot, not our red - and her long hair was matted and tangled. Her ponytail had come undone somewhere between her hospital room and the parking lot. Her skin was pale, so pale I could make out the veins criss-crossing beneath her eyelids. Her tears had left a series of long stains down her cheeks, and the skin around her eyes was pinkish-red. She had tucked a photograph into her breast pocket, over her heart, I noticed, and now and again she would press her open palm against it like she was afraid it would fly away. I held out my hand. “Kano”, I said.

“Yes, Commander?”, he said, suppressing a yawn. I shot him a glare, and he grinned before dropping the key into my palm.

 

It was almost midnight, and the lights from the city cast a greyish-blue haze in through the window. Wordlessly, the others went to bed. Hiyori stood outside the door. When I turned to look at her, she matched my gaze for a moment, then her eyes darted to the floor.

“Come on in”, I said. She slipped off her shoes, and gingerly crossed the threshold.

 

She sat on the couch with her hands in her lap, looking like she was about to be scolded. “Relax”, I told her, “We’re gonna take care of you.”

Upon hearing this, her eyes seemed to snap into focus. She looked up at me as if for the first time and opened her mouth to say something, before reconsidering. She tensed her jaw, pressed her tongue against her teeth, and crossed her legs. I sat down on the ottoman across from her.

“My friends and I”, I continued, “we have a...club, I suppose you’d call it. It’s not as organized as it sounds, we’re really just a group of friends with a name.

“I know you’re upset about what happened to your friend, and I know it’s hard, but I need you to tell me what happened.”

She withdrew into her seat a little, so I added, “Not ‘till you’re ready.”

I pulled a folded-up comforter from beneath the coffee table in the center of the room and offered it to her. She dipped her head in gratitude, then pulled the blanket up to her chin.

I gave her as warm a smile as I could manage. “I’ll get you some tea. Then we’ll talk”.

 

* * *

 

Her shoes clicked against the hardwood floor as she disappeared down the hallway. I was alone again.

Letting my neck go limp, I sank backwards into the couch until my head rested against the cushions, looking up at the ceiling. My muscles felt liquid and unresponsive. I was cold. Unable or unwilling to move, I listened to the on-and-off drone of the wind outside and felt the blood move sluggishly through my veins. My eyes were sore from crying. The entire world felt and sounded like a single dull impact, thump, drawn out forever in two directions.

In an odd way this was comfortable. I guess I developed a taste for stasis.

“Count the seconds.”

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the voice was not inside my head. Mustering all of my strength, I sat up. “What?”, I asked.

A boy about Tsubomi’s age was sitting on the chair on the opposite side of the coffee table. His hair was short and shockingly blonde, and the hoodie he wore looked more like a poncho, as it didn’t have a zipper or any way for the two sides to connect. “Ever heard of jet lag? You’re going through something similar. You can’t really sense the passage of time because you haven’t needed to for a while.” He stood up and started pacing around the room slowly.

“So start counting off the seconds as they tick by.”

I obliged. One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four-one thousand. At ten seconds, my body started to warm up. His features were razor-sharp, especially his long, thin eyebrows. Eleven-one thousand, twelve-one thousand, thirteen thousand, fourteen thousand. At twenty seconds, the chill that had permeated me compressed into a tiny sphere behind my eyes. His irises were vertical slits, like a snake’s. Strangest of all, they were red. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. At thirty seconds, my ears popped so suddenly and with such intensity that it was like being at the bottom of the ocean one second and in an airplane the next. I heard ringing, followed by a whoosh that I assumed was blood swirling around in my head, expanding now that the pressure had been relieved. My vision blurred, and when it refocused I was on the floor, looking at the ceiling. I felt a warm liquid above my upper lip, its texture eerily familiar.

“Kido! Get in here!”, I heard the boy call, followed by frantic shuffling. Someone lifted me back onto the couch. My head was buzzing. Images were becoming indistinct masses of color, dissolving further and further until I blacked out. I don’t remember if I was conscious for very long after that. But I remember thinking.

 

Ninety-six.

Ninety-seven.

Ninety-eight.

Ninety-nine.

  
  
  



	2. The Queen, The Ghost, and The Idol

One hundred.

 

I woke up to the scent of freshly-starched bedsheets and chamomile tea. All I could hear was the low rumble of the air conditioner. Gently, I opened my eyes to see a shaft of light beaming in from a window and illuminating a patch of fabric on the pillow next to me. My eyes drifted from the lit patch to the rust colored stain on the comforter, to the girl sitting in a straight-backed chair next to the bed, nose buried in a book, looking for all the world like she came in the same package as the sheets against my skin and pillows beneath my head. I blinked a few times, gradually drifting into consciousness. The blurriness at the edges of my vision receded, and I took a better look at the girl. She wore a sky-blue dress that reached down to the middle of her calves beneath a lacy white apron. Her hair was cream-colored, thick, and unbelievably long, reaching almost to the hem of her dress. She held her book delicately, her mouth forming a perfectly straight line save for the tiny bit of tension at the corner, just teetering on the edge of a smile.

I paused when I noticed her eyes. She emoted with her eyes more than anything else, and at the moment they seemed to gleam with contentment as they scanned the pages of her book. More striking, however, was the fact that her irises were crimson.

I suddenly got the sensation I was falling, and a spasm went up my spine, startling the girl sitting beside the bed.

“Oh! Miss Asahina, you’re awake,” she said with formality she was clearly uncomfortable with.

I sat up, immediately feeling a wave of pain behind my eyes.

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“Um...my name is Mary Kozakura. The Commander wanted me to watch you. We were all pretty scared because your nose started bleeding, and you...passed out.”

I massaged my temples. “Yeah.”

“So...if there’s anything you need-”

The bedroom door flew open.

“Mary, is she up?”

I recognized the girl in the doorway as Momo Kisaragi, the idol whose merchandise adorned every inch of space on the walls of my room back home. Memories flooded back that were, technically speaking, only a week or two old. Waking up one weekend to find that I’d won two tickets to Momo’s upcoming Obon concert in Tokyo. The fantasies of not just seeing her live, but going to the capital of Japan, getting my foot in the door, finally escaping the vise-like grip of my hometown of Aibetsu. My dreams being crushed when my parents said I couldn’t go alone. Remembering Hibiya…

I couldn’t finish the thought before I felt the white-hot tears in my eyes. I felt something compressing in my chest, coiling tighter and tighter before it snapped.

“Hey, are you alright? What’s wrong?”, Momo asked. I shook my head. I just wanted to stop thinking, go back to sleep, run away from something. The nightmarish experience of August Fifteenth, waking up in a hospital, these weird kids and their club, Momo Kisaragi just so happening to be in on it…my life had officially become a fever dream that I could not wake up from. I wasn’t sure if I was laughing or crying. All I knew was that I wanted to scream. My skin felt ice-cold.

 

I didn’t notice that Momo had sat down next to me until she reached around and put her hand on my right arm. I turned to look at her.

I could see incredible detail in her face. Without all the makeup she wore onstage, her skin was tan and coarse. Her cheeks especially had a sandy texture to them, in sharp contrast to the soft, snowy pallor they had in her promotional material. Her jaw was set, and her amber eyes locked with mine, looking neither at me nor through me.

She was looking into me, into my soul.

Her gaze softened, and she smiled gently before pulling me closer. “You’re safe.”

“What?”

She rested her head on mine. It became a kind of sideways hug.

“You’re safe. I understand if you’re scared, and I don’t imagine you trust us very much, but we’re going to take care of you.”

I took a shaky breath. “‘We’ as in your...club?”

“That’s right. We’ve all been through what you’ve been through, more or less.”

I gulped.

“And what exactly have I been through?”

She looked up and smiled as Kido appeared in the doorway without a sound.

“Ah, Commander, just in time. Wanna give her the briefing now?”

Kido nodded, and pulled up a chair. This was the first time I’d seen her without her hood pulled up and her collar concealing her nose and mouth. Her green hair was pulled into a ponytail, but that didn’t stop it from reaching down to her shoulderblades. The left leg of her pants was rolled up to her knee.

“It’s time for a story. Listen carefully.”

She closed her eyes, steeling her nerves for what was next.

“When I was ten years old, my father’s wife left him, and he set fire to the family’s house. He got trapped inside, and by the time paramedics arrived, the damage to his lungs was too extensive to do anything but keep him comfortable for the three days he had to live. My big sister and I were trapped as well. It was a big house, with a lot of rooms, and we got lost. The fire killed us before the smoke did. The date was August Fifteenth.

“You’ve met Mary, I take it? When she was 40 years old, a group of hunters found the house where she and her mother lived. Her mother was out, so they tied her up and began to drag her back to their village. She fought them tooth and nail, screamed out for help, until they cut her throat. Her mother found her, along with the hunters, and she turned every one of them to stone. The strain was too much for her, and her heart burst. It took her less than a minute to die. The date was August Fifteenth.

“Yesterday, an unlicensed heavy-goods vehicle lost control at an intersection, and crashed into the entryway of an apartment building, killing two children, identified as Hibiya Amamiya and Hiyori Asahina.” She looked me dead in the eyes. “When the paramedics arrived, you didn’t have a pulse. All attempts to revive you were fruitless. The ambulance was only a formality. They were going to take you to the morgue, until you came back. Not only did your heart start beating, not only were you breathing, you were conscious. You were coherent. You sat up and asked where you were. And they couldn’t find a scratch on you.”

She leaned back in her chair. “All of us should be dead. All of us were dead. And we want to know why. That’s why we formed this gang, the Mekakushi Dan. To find out why we’re here, and what we can do to save the people we died with.”

I realized that I had been holding my breath. “Okay. Let’s say I believe you. What can I do to help Hibiya?”

Kido glanced at Momo like she hadn’t been expecting the question. “We...we don’t know.”

I sighed. “Then you can’t help me.” I stood up and walked to the window. While we were talking, the sky had become overcast. Tiny droplets of rain began to form on the window pane.

I wondered if it was raining in the Kagerou Daze. Hibiya once told me he loved the rain.

 

* * *

 

Hiyori stood at the window, motionless, watching the rain come down. I sighed, nodded to Momo, and pulled up my hood. One thing left.

“Hiyori. There’s someone who wants to see you.”

“Who?” she muttered, not looking away from the storm.

“Member Number Nine.” 

* * *

 

Kido and Momo left, shutting the door behind them. They talked for a while, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Finally, the whispering died down, and Kido opened the door.

Later, she would tell me that she said something along the lines of “I think you two know each other”, but all I remember hearing is the rush of blood in my head. Chinatsu Asahina was Member Number Nine.

* * *

 

“Master.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“How come you were so rude to that girl?”

“What girl?”

Ene scoffed. “The tall one. With the short hair? Chinatsu?”

I looked down at my reflection on the surface of my drink. “Her.” I took a sip. “I dunno. Something’s...off about her.”

“Off?”

My eyes felt sore.

“Yeah, I just didn’t...recognize her.”

  



	3. First Words

_August 12th_

_Train Station_

 

“Chinatsu? I’m Hiyori Asahina,” I said. She stood with one hand on her hip and her bright green windbreaker tied around her waist.

“What’s your story?”, she asked me. Her voice was warm, but it had an husky sort of edge to it.

“My story?” I asked, confused.

“That’s right. Come on, I ordered us dinner. You can tell me in the car.”

 

“To be interested is to be interesting," she said as we drove home. “Everyone has a story. Everyone you glance at on the bus, every person you bump into on the sidewalk, every man, woman and child on the planet has a story. And if you listen… you might find that their stories have more in common with one another than you thought. That’s the secret.” She grinned and winked at me in the rearview mirror. “That’s your big-sisterly advice for the day, Hiyori. Treasure it.”

“You’re not my sister,” I said.

She looked unfazed. “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” She paused. “That means it’s my kick-ass advice that makes me your big sister. Big sister figure.”

“Is that right?”

“I don't make the rules," she said with another grin.

Hibiya looked out the window at the people milling about through the shopping district. “What’s your story, then?," he muttered.

“My story? Hmm… I was born in Kyoto, I moved here when I was eight, and right now I’m working on getting my doctorate in child psychology. I’m a counselor at the high school where Hiyori’s brother-in-law teaches.”

“What a coincidence,” I said.

“Not really. I was the one who convinced him to move to the special-ed program. He was a college professor before that.”

“I haven’t seen him since Ayano’s funeral. Haven’t talked to him since Ayaka’s. Am I finally going to get to meet him on this trip?”

“No.”

I looked up. Her expression had hardened, and her grip on the steering wheel tightened. Then, in an instant, the cool big sister Chi was back. “No,” she said again, warmer this time, “he’s teaching summer classes, so he’ll be busy all week.” She smiled. “I know you want to meet him, kiddo, but trust me, he’s pretty underwhelming in person. A father to his students, but a teacher to his family.”

We went for a while without talking. Traffic was awful that day, and at one point we waited almost fifteen minutes to move three feet. Chi would start to say something, then change her mind and keep quiet. Hibiya rested his head against the window, trying to get to sleep. I spoke up.

“You were a counselor when Ayano went to school, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did she…” I trailed off, scared to ask the question.

“She was hurting. That’s all I know.” She closed her eyes, thinking. “The sun went dim, and the moon turned black, for she loved him, and he couldn’t love back. To misquote a poet.”

Traffic let up, and we were moving again.

“I failed her. I failed a lot of people that day. It… it hasn’t gotten any easier, knowing you could have done something, said something. Not knowing, actually, but thinking. One dead, two missing, and… the Kisaragi kid. He took it hard. Turns out, he did love her.” She sighed, seeming exhausted all of a sudden. “Too little, too late, I guess. I wonder if he dreams about it like I do.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“August Fifteenth. In a few days, it’ll have been three years.”

 

* * *

 

_August 16th_

 

Kido lit a candle and placed it on the table. Kano, the blonde from last night, collected our cell phones. Mary and Seto, a freakishly tall 16-year-old with a firm voice and a cottony laugh, served drinks, and Momo and I went through the apartment, turning off all the lights and closing all the drapes. She would attempt to make small talk, and I would launch into stories of my...extensive knowledge of and devotion to her musical career.

“So, you’re a fan?” she asked.

“Absolutely! When your first EP came out, I got my entire class to write letters to our local radio station to get you more airplay! They had maybe twenty or thirty songs on their rotation, and they were overlooking a ton of really good artists. I’ve actually written essays on how your later albums deconstruct the idea of celebrity and normalcy, and your complicated views about the ideas of fate and destiny in the internet age, and how you question if fame was ever anything more than a shallow label bestowed upon the people who were in the right place at the right time!”

“Uh...yeah…” she said, overwhelmed. “That… thank you?”

I felt like now would not be the best time to tell her about the plushies. We sat on opposite sides of the table.

 

When night fell, Kido proposed a toast. “To Members Number Six, Seven, Eight and Nine. Welcome to the family. To the entire Dan, for staring death in the face, and refusing to yield. And finally,” she said, dipping her head a bit, “to those we left behind. Their sacrifice is the reason we’re here today. To my big sister.”

Seto spoke up. “To Cairo.”

Kano’s smile fell a bit. “To my mother.”

Momo took a deep breath. “To my father”.

Mary’s hair was vibrating. “To Mama.”

A tinny voice came from Shintaro’s phone. “To Haruka”.

It was my turn. I looked out the window. The storm continued even into the night. Knowing he was sharing this moment with me, I raised my glass.

“To Hibiya.”

 

* * *

 

I open my eyes to the sound of thunder. Morning.

It’s cold, so I tear away a chunk of the world to let the warm air in. Outside, the streets are flooded, and the water’s just shy of boiling. Stop signs, Yield signs, streetlights of various makes and models emerge from the ground like weeds, rise up the sides of buildings like ivy. The sidewalk is made of bone. Not human bone, it’s too brittle. My guess would be some kind of reptile. Chunks fall away at random into an endless bright red void. I didn’t sleep well last night.

Up ahead, a girl rests on a net made out of telephone wires. This is the third time I’ve seen her. I recognize the scarf around her neck, and the black school uniform.

“Hey!” I call.

She turns. The net snaps.

I panic, and run towards her, but she lands flawlessly on her feet.

“You’re Hibiya, right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She laughs. It sounds like birdsong. “You don’t have to call me ma’am. I’m not that much older than you are.”

“Sorry. What’s your name?”

“Ayano Tateyama. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Is there anyone else here?”

“I’ve only met one other person. He’s here with me, actually.”

“Who is it?”

She nods at a hospital looming in the distance, shimmering like a mirage. Everything does that here.

“His name’s Haruka. He’s kind of a special case. He stayed here so that two other people could leave.”

“How does that work?”

“Well, one person came back without a body. The other one...I’m not sure.”

I steel myself for the big question.

“Is there any way out of here?”

She smiles at me. “I’m not sure anymore. I don’t even think Clearing Eyes knows what’s happening now.” She laughs and rubs her forehead with her hand. “I guess I’ve got to fill you in on how everything works here.”

I watch as a chunk of oxygen spontaneously freezes solid and hovers in midair.

“That might take a while,” I mutter.

She grins disarmingly. “Well, we’ve got nothing but time here.”

 

 


	4. Shinigami Record

“So...who is Clearing Eyes?” I ask. 

Ayano smiles. She seems to smile a little more every time I talk, and it doesn’t feel genuine at all. 

“Have you ever heard of Shinigami Record, Hibiya?”

“The fairy tale?”

“That’s not the word I would use,” she says. We had arrived at the hospital. The concrete structure pulsates slowly, almost like…breathing. 

“Stand back,” she says. She grabs the door and pulls. A hurricane-force torrent of hot air spews out into the street. 

I begin to have second thoughts about following her. She turns around and faces me. 

“In here.”

Inside the hospital, there is a writhing mass of some kind of organic material. The walls and floor appear to be made out of glass, making it difficult to tell what is solid and what isn’t. I take a tentative step forward, and the glass gives just a bit underneath my feet. The mass in the center of the hallway began to vibrate. 

Ayano grabs my shoulder, squeezes it reassuringly, and takes the lead. We make our way forward, clinging to the walls. Every step we take seems to agitate the the mass further. Soon, we’re close enough for me to make it out clearly. The mass is made up of thousands and thousands of snakes with jet-black scales, forming a sphere around...something. 

Something that‘s emitting a high-pitched ringing, like an old cathode-ray TV that’s been left on. 

Ayano puts her hand on my chest, holding me back, and gently reachs forward to touch the sphere. When she does, it falls apart. The snakes scatter, revealing a child wrapped in a jet-black fur cloak. 

It falls face down onto the glass floor, which rattles from the impact. Everything is still. 

I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, and Ayano’s pulse tapping in her wrist. The bundle of fur shuffles weakly, and Ayano steps forward to kneel down next to it. I stay where I am, hoping to keep as much distance as possible between myself and the child. 

Ayano helps it up and pulls back the hood of its cloak, and I see that it’s not a child. 

She stands about three feet tall, but her face looks like that of a dignified young woman. Moreover, it’s stark-white, and on her cheeks are two ragged strips of flesh, segmented, hard and shiny. Scales. Her curly black hair is mountainous, cascading over her shoulders and down to her feet, set here and there with long strips of red ribbon. When she opens her eyes, they’re glowing yellow, and the irises are vertical slits. She blinks, and they appear human again. I can assign ages to individual elements of her face, but taken as a whole, she appears ageless, like a rock formation, a comparison made only more apt by her stony glare. Her gaze pierces my core, and freezes my heart. There’s something familiar about it. 

“Hibiya,” Ayano says. “This is the Monster”.

* * *

Once upon a time, there lived an immortal Monster who lost everything. The humans rejected her, her husband was dead, her daughter was alone, and her snakes had betrayed her. Now, she lay suffering in a world she had created, a world with no beginning, and no end. A world where nothing would change, and her singular moment of happiness could be stretched out infinitely in both directions, past and future. But the sources of her happiness, a human man named Tsukiko and their daughter, Shion, were gone.

And so, the Monster wept. Unable to move forward, unable to look back, every moment stung of fresh loss, rejection, and regret. She wept until the act itself hurt her, and then she kept going. Her sorrow had no beginning and no end. 

The snake who had betrayed her, Clearing Eyes, gave the world a name. The Heat Haze. He named it after the image of a pool of water that appears on a hot day. An oasis that turns out to be nothing more than a figment of your imagination. It seemed appropriate. 

And so it was. The Monster wept in her oasis of suffering, and the Snake of Clearing Eyes watched with glee as more people entered and left the Heat Haze. Years passed in the blink of an eye. Days seemed to last for centuries. 

Then, one day, the Heat Haze began to fall apart. Clearing Eyes created a loop, lasting from the beginning of time to August 15th, 2015. He set a wheel in motion. Two children, a boy and a girl, became trapped in their own oasis, repeating a cycle again and again. They spun the wheel faster and faster, tearing the walls of the Haze with each rotation. Soon, it all began to collapse. The cycles began to change, became more unpredictable with each rotation. Like a story handed down across generations, the details changed little by little. Characters entered, exited, lived and died in a thousand different ways. 

Then, the boy and an older girl he had befriended in the Haze found the Monster and set her free from her cage. Weak and exhausted, the Monster could hardly speak. The children took her into the light, and she rested. When she awoke, she declared, in her cold and steady voice, that the final rotation would begin soon.

 


	5. Chapter 5

The week came to an end. Shintaro, eighteen and bony with a red jersey jacket, made the arrangements with my parents. Chi and Momo agreed to stay with me. When we got to my house, Mom held me against her chest, and I could feel her heart beating and her shoulders quivering as she tried to hold back tears. Dad just shook his head like he couldn’t believe it. I didn’t tell them everything. I didn’t tell them anything.

Before all that though, Shintaro sat us down and told us what he had seen.

* * *

 

I woke up when a beam of orange light fell on my left eye. I peeled my face away from the person to my right’s shoulder and moved my bangs so that they could shield me from the sunset. 

“Hiyori? We’re almost there.”

It was Momo’s voice. Amazing, I thought,  how used to it I’ve become. I closed my eyes again, falling back into my cocoon of semi-consciousness. Something happened in my mind, half-memory, half-dream. 

I’m kneeling in a garden listening to a snake. A viper, the kind that can kill you in six minutes. She’s sad, because she thought that she was different from the humans. “Of all the things we taught the Monster, there was one thing she couldn’t understand.”

“What was it?” I ask.

“How terrifying it is, knowing one day you’re going to die. It got to all of us. Clearing Eyes decided to do something about it. That’s all this is. Serpents like us, when we die, we thrash about with every ounce of energy we have left. You’ve seen it?”

“No, but I can imagine.”

“Let me show you.”

Her eyes glow red, and I see a snake coiling and uncoiling, flailing about like a flag in a hurricane before it’s finally still. 

“We’re afraid. Just like you.”

I remember the look on Hibiya’s face the first time he died. Disbelief. Utter disbelief.

“I understand.”

Perhaps it’s a trick of the light, but I swear that she’s smiling now. Her voice is certainly lighter. 

“You know, you remind me a lot of her. The Monster.”

“How so?”

“When we would teach her about what we found, she would stare at us the same way. Leaning forward, brow furrowed. She was so intense. I loved that.”

I shift nervously, knowing she’s reading my body language now. 

She continues. “Communication is such a beautiful tool. It’s more than a tool, it’s...it’s air. It’s the medium through which you stay sane. I love it.”

“It’s okay,” I say. She opens her mouth to ask a question when the train lurches to a stop.

“Hiyori, we’re here.”

I blinked the sleep crust from my eyes and, leaning on Momo, rose to my feet. 

“Are you gonna be okay?” Her voice was tender, like I was a crystal statue she was afraid to break.

I looked at her. My eyes burned, but I focused on the red-tinted reflection in her amber irises. 

She nodded. “I understand.”

I felt compelled to smile. I took her hand, and our shoes clapped against the metal grate, then the sidewalk, in perfect unison. 

A song began to play from the loudspeakers on telephone poles and streetlights. I didn’t know the words, but the tune was familiar. It made me think of taking my shoes off and muttering “I’m home” into the house, of resenting the all-too-cheery reply, and of secretly being comforted by it.

The wind picked up when we passed my school. Momo looked to her right, and stopped short, awestruck by the sunset. My hand drifted to the pocket on my dress. I felt a scrap of paper there that I couldn’t bring myself to look at just yet.

* * *

 

“So...what? We’ve just got to wait for it to happen again?”

“Just this last time.”

“You’re sure?” 

“Absolutely. Chi’s not supposed to be here, not supposed to have an eye power. The cycle’s falling apart. The next time it resets will be the last.”

“Then...what do we do?”

Shintaro leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Live. Wait. Try to be happy. That’s all we can do, really.”

* * *

 

I pulled the picture out of my pocket and held it up to the sunlight. We looked so happy.

I pressed it against my heart, perhaps hoping that a bit of it would stay there. 

I held my arm out, opened my palm, and the picture fluttered away on the wind, free. Like me. 

“Let’s go home,” I said. 

_ Yuuyake, koyake de higakurete _

_ Yama no otera no kaneganaru _

_ Otete tsunaide minakaero _

_ Karasu to isshoni _

_ Kaeri ma shou _

  
  
  



End file.
